SOTF Mini

((SB04: BETHAN GAYLE - START))



The shop boat rocked, gently, in its current location on the flotilla. It was more akin to a rubber duck floating in the bath than to a schooner in a sea storm. The faded postcards and mismatched snorkeling gear barely even shifted with the motion of the boat; there was a faint creaking, but little more than that.

Yet as the boat shifted to the right, Bethan felt her knees wobble and give way underneath her. She collapsed in a heap, hands still clutching the counter she’d crumpled in front of, and as soon as her knees hit the floor, she felt herself crying.

Again. This was about the third time since she’d woken up here, behind a couple of rusty cash registers, that she’d burst into tears.

And it wasn’t because of the boat that she felt like she was gonna go through a cycle of crying and collapsing and throwing up! She’d probably been on more boats than any of her classmates, in all honesty. Frequent trips around the coast of Jamaica and around the cliffs of Wales for seal watching meant that for all her inner-city aesthetics, Bethan had a sturdy pair of sea legs!

No, it was probably the nine foot spear propped up against one wall of the floating shop that was causing her lungs to work overtime. Or the collar wrapped around her neck, perspex necklace bouncing against it as her body shook and her chest heaved. She was no stranger to chokers; the ones in her rave outfits ranged from normal black leather ones and ones with pretty little metal hearts on them, to the more outlandish spiked chokers and ‘dog collar’ chokers.

Collars packed with explosives, though, they were a little too dangerous for Bethan’s tastes.

She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, getting mascara smeared all over her wrist, as another sob wracked through her body and made her double over. They’d abducted her on the way back from a rave, hadn’t they? Early in the morning, the Miami sun only just rising. They’d barely needed the freaking anaesthetic, she had been so off her head on jagerbombs and pills that she hadn’t noticed the abduction crew until their hands were around her arms. She’d blacked out as soon as she’d been put into the van.

She remembered it dearly, because she knew she shouldn’t have gone to a rave on a school night, but there was no way on Earth she was gonna miss this one, and she had had so much fun, and…

And…

And now it was irreversibly linked with this and all the memories of everything she loved, of her neon and pastel and bright lights and lurid drinks and of Lucille, of all her previous flings who she’d turned down at that party because the only person she could think of was Lucille, all of it was going to be linked with Survival of the Fittest in her mind for as long as she lived, which wouldn’t be very long because she only had days left even if she somehow lucked her way into endgame and where was Lucille where was Lucille where was Lucille where was Lucille

Bethan screamed, voice cracking in the middle as tears ran down her cheeks, and she slammed her fist into the counter, yelping and crying even harder as her hand connected. Her thumb had been behind her fingers and it felt like she’d caught it in a vice. Her knuckles were scraped and bloodied. She shoved her hand into her other hand and whimpered.

“Ow…”

Somewhere far below her heartbeat and her pounding head, a beeping noise had started.

((Kaya Robinson Start))

The sound of heavy footsteps could be heard from the outside shortly before Kaya Robinson descended into the shop with a hurried, frantic pace. In the time since awakening, she had donned the trilby and trenchcloak she'd found as her fanservice outfit, though the rifle carried loosely in her arms might have been more conspicuous. Her bandana was looped through the button of the coat's pocket.

"Who's there?" She called calmly. "I won't hurt you unless you make me, so let's just stay cool for now, okay?" Kaya began to slowly make her way around the room, pausing periodically, before stopping as her gaze turned to the spear propped up against the wall near the cash register. "You back there? I'm gonna come around, so, don't freak out." Awkwardly sliding the rifle into the trenchoat, where it was left mostly out of view as long as she stood up straight, Kaya stepped around the counter.

As soon as Bethan came into view, she frowned, biting her lip. "Hey, Bethan. I uh, take it 'you good' isn't really gonna cut it here, huh?" She put her hands on her hips, staring down sympathetically at the other girl.

Footsteps. Growing louder by the second.

Her head snapped upwards, and another frantic whimper escaped Bethan’s lips, but she managed to choke back the sob that threatened to erupt forth just in time, clamping her hands over her mouth. Not that it mattered. She could have yelled and flailed and made as loud a noise as possible, what would it have changed? She was going to die. There was someone else on the boat with her and they were going to kill her and she was going to die.

She felt tears pooling onto the sides of her hands, and as she tried to blink them away, her vision briefly fell on the long spear leaning on the wall nearby. It was… It was an option, certainly. Scramble over to the polearm, grab it and hide, and as soon as whoever it was on deck stepped inside the shop, she could… well… Yeah. You know. It was a plan. It would keep her safe.

Unless the intruder was totally harmless, and she found herself… y’know… someone totally innocent. Then she’d be probably the first person on that stupid announcement, and then there’d be a great big target on her back, and she’d be in even more danger than before! And that wasn’t even getting into the question of, even if she was faced with someone planning to stab her or shoot her or immolate her or blow her up or poison her or club her upside the head, whether or not she’d deer-in-headlights as soon as she sprung up, spear clasped in trembling hands.

So Bethan stayed where she was, ducked down behind the counter, as the stranger, who she couldn’t really call a stranger anymore because that was Kaya’s voice, Kaya who wasn’t exactly a friend but definitely wasn’t an enemy, or rather, hadn’t been an enemy, but had certainly been a very, very big fan of SOTF, called out, asking for peace. Was she lying? Was she bluffing? Was she waiting for Bethan to pop her head out from behind the counter just to put a bullet between her eyes? She could… She didn’t… She didn’t have to… have to hurt Kaya permanently. She could scream and she could run and she could hit her with the blunt end of the spear and then she could, she could, she could jump over the side of the boat if she needed to, and then, and then…

Her breath caught in her throat, and in that moment of stillness, of silence, of nothingness in her head and her heart, Kaya stepped into view around the side of the counter.

“I-I…”

She wanted to yelp in fear, well, more accurately, she wanted to scream her lungs out again, but her body was so tensed up and frozen in place that a yelp felt like all she could muster, but it turned out even that was too much for to handle, so she just sat there, wide-eyed, trembling as she looked up at the other girl.

She wasn’t moving. Kaya, that is. Well, Bethan wasn't moving either, but what was more important, more pertinent, was that Kaya hadn't made any sort of threatening, dangerous move. If she had a weapon, she hadn’t got it drawn. There was… was that concern in her voice? It felt like concern, and Bethan couldn’t remember Kaya ever having been an actress. If she’d wanted to kill Bethan, she would already have done it. What would she gain by drawing this out further?

“I… No, it… I’m… You… I, mean, um, I…”

As she unintelligibly stumbled over her words, trying to get her senses back in working order, she felt her body starting to relax, the tension slowly ebbing away. The immediate horror at Kaya’s sudden arrival was starting to fade, slowly being replaced by the more widespread terror at her general situation. Which admittedly wasn’t much of an upgrade, but beggars couldn’t be choosers, and all that!

But with the decrease of pressure and the increase of clarity came something else. A sound, cutting through into Bethan’s senses. A beeping. Repeating itself, like a phone alarm, from very nearby.

Was it her imagination, or had it just started to pick up in pace?

“Is…” Bethan started, looking around the immediate area before staring up at Kaya again. “Is that you? Are-Are you beeping, why are you beeping?”

Kaya quirked a smile at Bethan's reply. "Like I said, we're cool." She did not approach, simply remaining by the side of the counter with a relaxed posture. As she spoke, Kaya looked around the room. "I think we're all alone right now, but if you wanna just chill down there, that's cool, too."

As the beeping continued, though, she frowned. "That's not me. I think it's coming from you." She tilted her head. "I think it's your collar. Did you put your bandana on? You know, for the teams." Kaya gestured to the bandana tucked into her pocket. "I'm uh, I guess I'm a Buccaneer? Stephanie Cahill's my mentor, which is cool. She won a pirate season, so, since we're on boats, that's pretty good sign I hope."

She paused. "Oh, but definitely make sure to put your bandana."

“Wh…”

…

Oh.

Oh, gosh, yeah, that was definitely coming from her own collar.

Bethan managed to finally squeak out a yelp, as she scrambled round behind her for her bag, unzipping it with such frantic force she heard the fabric rip beneath her fingers. The bright pink bandana was the first thing to greet her, and the first bit of good luck she’d had all day. She yanked it out, tying it hurriedly round her ankle.

“It’s on!” Bethan managed to blurt out, in between more deep breaths. “It’s on it’s on it’s on, it’s on!”

Beep

…

Silence.

Bethan held her breath for a few moments longer, then as she exhaled, collapsed back against the counter once more, tilting her head to glance up at Kaya.

“I, uh… Sorry,” she mumbled. “I’m kinda a huge mess right now, aren’t I?”

She gave the other girl a very, very faint smile, a ghost of the grin normally plastered across her face.

“I’m… not gonna cry again. Promise. All cried out.”

And she was, too. She felt totally and completely exhausted now. It was almost nice in a way, even with the sensation of dried tears and eyeshadow plastered to her cheeks. Comfortably numb. The realisation of what was going outside of this boat, beyond the wooden wall of this shop counter, it all felt out of focus and unimportant, and Bethan didn’t think it was a crime to want to feel that way a little while longer.

Her head tilted as she looked Kaya up and down. She didn’t normally wear… that outfit, did she? The whole trench coat, trilby, hardboiled getup? Obviously Bethan wasn’t one to start judging other peoples outfits, in fact it kinda suited the other girl, although goodness knows it would make her melt in a second in Miami, just that she was one of the sporty folks, right? It couldn’t be easy to play volleyball in a coat that was as long as you were tall, could it?

It took Bethan a moment to remember the existence of the ‘fanservice’ outfits. Another moment to realise that she’d, once again, just been staring at a girl without saying anything for a notable period of time.

And another moment for Kaya’s previous words, ‘Stephanie’s Buccaneers’, and the bright pink bandana tucked into her pocket, to reach home.

“Oh!” Bethan gasped, gaze flashing between her ankle and Kaya’s pocket. “Oh, we’re on the same team, that’s…”

She exhaled again, and tried really really hard to looked relieved, and pleased, and generally happy with everything going on around her.

“That’s good, right?”

Kaya smiled as the beeping stopped.

"It's fine, I'm trying not to freak out, too." She folded her arms. "It's kind of a lot, but we'll make it through."

As Bethan stared at her, Kaya looked down at herself, spreading her arms and looking at her sleeves. She chuckled sheepishly. "Yeah, I know. I thought it was cool, and it's got pockets I can put stuff in, so I figured why not? It might be kinda hot, but it'll keep the sun off a little, right?"

Kaya's eyes widened for a moment as Bethan mentioned their shared team, and she grinned. "Yeah, that's great, actually. Lucky, too. We can stick together from now on if you want." She slowly began to approach Bethan, crouching slightly to stretch out her hand to the prone girl. "We can hang out here or go exploring, either way's fine with me."

She grinned. "There's a lot of cool-sounding places here, looking at the map, if you wanna go check them out."

Bethan looked straight at Kaya’s hand for several seconds.

“I think, um…”

Slowly, she raised her own hand, letting it slip into Kaya’s grasp, wincing as her bloody knuckles jostled against the other girl’s palm. She let herself be pulled unsteadily to her feet, doe legs on ice forcing her to grab hold of the counter again. Deep breath in. Deep breath out. Okay.

Okay.

“I think I’d like to explore,” Bethan mumbled, tilting her head to look up at Kaya. “I think I might go a little, um, stir crazy. Being stuck in here for any longer. Too many, uh, bad thoughts, bad headspace… stuff, trapped inside here.”

There was something about Kaya’s choice of words that Bethan was finding really difficult to ignore. She supposed that ‘explore’ wasn’t an inaccurate description for what they’d be doing; it was a new, unfamiliar location, and a map could only tell them so much. Going out on deck and wandering around and roaming from ship to ship to ship, well, yeah, she guessed that was exploring! It just didn’t feel… serious enough. It didn’t carry enough weight for what they were surrounded by. The water. The weaponry. The collars around their necks.

And there was the other term she’d used. ‘Hang out’. Like they were still back at school, back at home, like they were planning on heading back to one of their houses to watch TV and play games and eat snacks together. Not bunking down here together for safety, hoping that someone didn’t run in and open fire at them.

“Oh, hang on, I haven’t actually checked what’s in my bag yet, can I just…”

She realised as well, as she pointed down at her bag, then did a little hesitant hovering dance as she waited for a nod of approval from Kaya, that she wasn’t exactly opposed to it. The word choice. The detective get-up. The whole… treating this entire thing like it was some kind of adventure. There was something comforting about it, something that helped to numb the all-pervasive terror that had been surrounding her since she woke up.

It wasn’t a crime to want to feel comfortable, right?

Bethan plopped her bag onto the countertop, rummaging through the already opened pack to look for her own map, making a mental checklist of all the other contents, digging through packs of vacuum sealed food and bright pink clothing until she found her prize. Her eyes scanned the laminated surface, taking in the various other boats and jetsam surrounding them - A submarine? A RocketBoat?? A ghost ship??? - before she looked back up at Kaya.

“Wow, you weren’t lying, huh? What even is a RocketBoat d’you think?”

There was a grin tugging at the corner of her lips despite everything, but a moment later, it was replaced by an ‘O’ shape and a gasp, as realisation and remembrance lit up in Bethan’s eyes.

“Oh, um, but while we’re exploring and stuff, can we, can we try and keep an eye out for people? I wanna, well, I wanna make sure that everybody’s doing okay and staying safe and stuff, but… but I really really wanna find Lucille, and Virginia too, more than anything. If… that’s okay with you, of course!”

Kaya's grip was strong and firm as she hoisted Bethan up in a single, smooth motion, only to move in as the other girl staggered before withdrawing once Bethan had steadied herself.

She nodded. "Yeah, I getcha. It'll be better if we have something to do than just wait around." After a moment, Kaya did indeed give the nod of approval for Bethan to check her pack.

While she did so, Kaya put her hands back on her hips as she looked over to the door. "No clue." Bethan's subdued addition to the question diminished Kaya's smile somewhat. "Yeah, we can definitely look for people too. I dunno if I have anyone I wanna find, though." She smiled wryly. "I was with the volleyball team when they grabbed me and I was the only one picked, so I don't think any of them are here. Lucky me, huh?"

She shrugged. "But yeah no, we can just stick together for now and see who we find, maybe some other Buccaneers. And hey, Virginia or Lucille could be on our team as well."

Kaya turned to look back at Bethan. "Oh, don't forget the spear." She pointed to the weapon on the wall. "Just, you know, in case. It's pretty intimidating at least."

“Oh! Right! Yeah, um, of course!”

Bethan looked at the spear, propped against the wall, gently swimming in and out of her vision as the boat rocked on the soft sea waves. She looked, and it looked back with no eyes. She felt her breath catch in her throat.

“Um, Kaya?”

She yanked her head to the side, ripping her gaze away from the pike to look at her friend, fixing an apologetic smile onto her face.

“I’m sorry, I know I’ve asked you for a lot already, I know I’ve kinda been a handful, but, um, could you give me a second? Like, to myself? I won’t be more than a couple of minutes, I promise.”

She caught herself, stopping her fingers midway through the act of drumming against the countertop.

“I’ll meet you out on deck, okay?”

Kaya tilted her head a little, but gave a nod. "Yeah, no prob. Take your time, I'll wait as long as you need."

Walking back around the counter, Kaya stopped. "Oh, real quick, figured you should know if we're sticking together." After a moment of fiddling with the buttons, Kaya opened up her trenchcoat, revealing the M1895 Lee Navy. It was taller than her torso, the barrel pointed down near her knees while the butt was rested up against her chest.

"I didn't want to scare you when I was coming it, but I have this." She said, looking a little more somber than before. "I don't plan to use it unless I need to, but I didn't want to catch you by surprise or anything. But don't worry about it, I read the manual and everything, I'll be careful." She grinned.

"Anyway, like I said, take your time. I'll be outside checking the map." And indeed, once she was done speaking, Kaya walked back out closing up her coat in the process, leaving Bethan all alone.

((Kaya Robinson continued in Turtle Town))

A gun. That was… that was a gun, that was an actual, real, really real, real life gun, right there, right in front of her eyes. That was… That…

That was fine. It was fine. It was fine! Really. Really fine.

“It’s fine… it’s fine…”

She whispered the words to herself, under her breath, as Kaya left the shop. She watched her go, footsteps fading and then stopping, listening to the faint sounds of a bag unzipping and fabric shuffling as she continued to murmur, soft and low.

It was fine. It was! Truly! Like… like, Kaya couldn’t help the fact she’d been given a gun, could she? That was just luck of the draw, right, what the producers had randomly thrown into her pack, yeah? And it would just be… just be stupid to throw it away, right? Even if you weren’t planning on using it yourself, there might be people who… maybe… well, it was better safe than sorry, right? AND she obviously hadn’t been planning on using it on Bethan, cause it was pointed at the floor and inside of her coat that took a really long time to unbutton, and…

Yeah. It was fine. There was nothing to worry about.

Bethan slowly walked around the counter, traipsing across to a glass-fronted cabinet and gazing into her reflection. Gosh. She really did look a state, didn’t she? There were streaks of purple and black running down her cheeks from her red, puffy eyes, and even as she looked now, her lips were wobbling, trying their hardest just to maintain a neutral expression.

Well. Big deep breaths. Then, first things first; deal with the makeup disaster. They were floating on some sort of lake, or reservoir, or maybe even somewhere in the ocean, right? Well, then… her makeup was gonna end up coming off sooner or later, wasn’t it? Might as well get it out of the way now. That made sense, didn’t it? Yeah. That made sense.

There was a rack of towels leaning precariously against a table, coloured bright blue and green, with patterns of starfish and dolphins running along them. Bethan grabbed the topmost one and pressed it into her face, soaking up the last remnants of her tears, wiping her cheeks and leaving streaks of makeup behind. She glanced back up at the cabinet.

Better. Not great, not even close to great. But better, and better was, well, better! It was acceptable. A little panda-esque, but it hopefully wouldn’t cause Virginia or Lucille to freak out at the sight of her, worry that something horrible had happened.

And hey. Hey. That was something. That was a goal, wasn’t it? If she was searching for comfort, for solace, then what could be more perfect for that than being with the people she was most familiar with, intimately so? She wound find them. And they would know she was all right. And… and she’d be all right, because she could just make it an adventure to try and find them, an exploration on the high seas, traversing across all different kinds of ships on her way to meet up with them.

She could pretend, she could… she could play pretend. She could do that. She could do that until she had managed to convince herself that pretend was real, and at that point, whatever else happened wouldn’t matter so much anymore.

A thought struck her, and she dug through her bag again, fishing out something from the bundle of clothes she’d disturbed earlier. If she was going on an adventure, she needed to be suited up for the task, right? Kaya had done so, after all! And although she didn’t want to change out of what was familiar, the cybergoth gear that now, more than ever, clung to her like home, she had noticed a pair of long blue gloves with bright white trim in her fanservice outfit. That would do as a start.

She slipped her wristbands off, tossing them into the bag, and quickly pulled the gloves on, tugging them up to her elbows. A perfect fit! That was… nice, if a little odd that the measurements were this good. Halfway through zipping her bag back up, another thought hit her, and she bent over, untying the bandana from around her leg. She moved quickly, not wanting to set off her collar again, hurrying over to her spear and tying the fabric around it, just under where the metal tip began, leaving two flowing bands of bright pink. She waited, holding her breath for thirty seconds, then another ten just to make sure.

No beeps. Clearly the producers were satisfied with this.

Bethan grabbed the pike, using her free hand to zip the bag up fully and slip it over her shoulder. She looked once more into her makeshift mirror. There. She was ready.

“Kaya! I’m good to go now!”

She turned to leave, forcing a spring into her step, as she-

CRUNCH

“... Oops.”

She walked briskly instead, making sure to keep the spear steady and level, leaving behind a neat round hole in the ceiling of the shop boat.

((Bethan Gayle continued in Turtle Town))